Plains school board studies 4-day school week

The Plains School Board met Monday Oct. 20 and one of the main issues they discussed was the possibility of implementing a four day school week in the future.

Superintendent Richard Magera cautioned that everything is in its beginning stages and that as of now there is no plan to implement a four day school week. However, the board discussed the idea last fall as a potential solution to economic and enrollment issues.

In order to give the board and community members a feel for what a four day school week would mean for Plains, Magera invited Alberton Superintendent Jim Baldwin and Alberton School Board member Steve Piippo to the meeting.

Alberton is in its first year of implementing a four day school week and Magera thought Baldwin and Piippo would give the board some insight into how it works.

Baldwin started off by telling the board that his is not a four day school week “guru” and while it seems to be a good solution for Alberton, that doesn’t mean it would work everywhere.

He said that the Alberton district started looking into the possibility of a four day school week four years ago. The district sent out over 600 surveys and 90 percent of the teachers were in favor of it and he said that it was about 50-50 for those in the general public.

“We discussed it as a board, but the timing wasn’t right,” Baldwin said. He continued on to say that the board decided to watch and see what happened with neighboring Victor as they decided to implement a four day school week.

“We brought Victor’s superintendent in last fall to talk about it,” Baldwin said. “They were just starting their second year and had a lot of positive things to say, and our board decided it was a good idea.”

Baldwin said that the biggest benefits of a four day school week are the financial aspects. There are also fewer students missing class time and disciplinary issues have gone way down.

Piippo said that the issue was close to his heart as his father, Walt, had dealt with it in some of his school districts and had phenomenal results. He said that Bonner’s Ferry, Utah saved over $300,000 in their first year. However, he did caution that they were a much larger school district, so their savings would be more than Alberton or Plains.

Piippo said that the issue the board was most concerned with was scholastic performance, but after doing research, he found that it really wasn’t anything to be concerned with.

“In 90-95 percent of schools where this was implemented test scores either remained the same or went up,” he said. “Attendance either remained the same or went up.”

While Piippo said there were a lot of positives to the four day school week, he cautioned Plains that Alberton was only roughly six weeks into the school year, and so they hadn’t had a lot of time to get any solid results.

Piippo said one downside is having a longer day, however he said that the students seem to be adjusting very well and that the teachers like having longer periods.

“We took all of the fat out of the day,” he said. “There is no independent study and that forces more efficiency.”

He also said that in order to deal with the fact that many students aren’t getting home until 5 p.m., they have significantly cut back on homework. “There really isn’t any reason they should have lots of homework,” he said. “The extra time during the school day should help them get it done.”

They’ve also adjusted sporting events the best they can to have them happen at the end of the week, so students aren’t getting home too late on school nights since they’re in school longer.

The board was concerned with the actual number of classroom hours students had and Baldwin said that actually their number of hours went up.

“We’re required to have 1,080 hours of class time in Montana,” he said. “At our school this year, we went up by 40 hours.”

While Baldwin and Piippo won’t know how much money the district saved until the end of the school year, they’re projecting a savings of $45-50,000 dollars. That comes from not having to run buses or electricity on Fridays as well as not having to pay classified staff, including janitors and cafeteria workers, to be there on Fridays.

“This just seemed like the best solution for us,” Piippo said. “If you guys do decide to implement this then you need to give it a set time frame to see if it works. I don’t think you’ll get all the results you want if you just do it for a year.”

Both Piippo and Baldwin said that if Plains decided to implement it they should give it at least two years, but ideally three to work out all the kinks and see if it is something that should be made permanent.

“You can always go back to a five day week if it doesn’t work,” Piippo said.

Magera thanked them for coming out to Plains and told the board that they were just in the very beginning stages of talking about the four day school week and to expect to hear more about it in the future.